nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Corrupt Portal Item - How to delete?

JonM32

How do you delete a corrupt portal item?

Our Enterprise Portal is federated and what happen was an item was deleted from the server's ArcGIS Server Manager. This was a mistake since the linked item in portal did not get deleted when the service was deleted from Server Manager. Is there any way to get rid of the portal item? All that happens when you try to open it is you get to watch the loading screen but nothing ever loads. To add to this, the item has delete protection on preventing it from being deleted from the Contents page.

Enterprise Portal version 10.9 - Federated

Any input is appreciated!!

-Jon

2025-04-21 08_38_21-Settings.png

Vind meer berichten getagd met

Content Management

Administration

Mapping

Accepted answers

All comments

ryanuthoff

You might be able to use the Python API to programmatically disable delete protection and then delete it. That would be the "safest" way to do it.

https://developers.arcgis.com/python/latest/guide/managing-your-content/

MikeVolz

Can you perform a test on a test mapservice that gets added to Portal but delete protection is not activated? Does the item get removed from Portal in that scenario? If it does, it would seem that there is a disconnect between Server Manager and Portal where Server Manager does not recognize delete protection on an item in Portal. It would seem that when Server Manager deletes an item, it should see if delete protection is activated for that item in Portal and not allow the delete to occur.

blake.terhune

You could also try using ArcGIS Assistant to modify the JSON and remove any references to the deleted service, hopefully allowing you to open the item detail page and manage it normally.

JonM32

I tried looking into this but the assistant couldn't load the item JSON or anything at all. I noticed this was solution for someone else but didn't work in this case.

JonM32

I can't say I'll be able to do this test until I figure out the current issue. But honestly think i'll pass on trying this because if I were to try and delete another service from manager first, it would cause another stuck item in portal possibly.

The documentation I've seen is not super clear on the order of operations when deleting federated portal services. But I did find one line in Esri documentation suggesting to always delete from Portal and not from Server Manager. Since learning that, I always delete from Portal first and since it's federated, the service in manager is deleted automatically with no issues.

JonM32

I'll look into this! Thanks for the suggestion Ryan.

DavidPike

Possibly reindex the portal.

From - How To: Manually Rebuild the Index in Portal for ArcGIS

NA after 10.7 but the PortalAdmin indexing step should still be valid

<domain>.com:7443/arcgis/portaladmin/

Click System > Indexer > Reindex.

JonM32

I tried doing this route, but when I tried to access the item using: gis.content.get() - it returned a bunch of errors stating the item didn't exist basically. So I think because of this something is missing and I won't be able to run the delete protection method on it.

If someone knows more about this let me know, but I think this option is a no go.

blake.terhune

Could you temporarily republish the service that was deleted from server so it has something to reference again?

JonM32

No luck. When I try to overwrite the service, it states "Unable to retrieve information for existing item"

blake.terhune

Sorry, I meant to recreate it (new), not overwrite it.

MikeVolz

Wouldn't publishing a new service just create a new Portal item as well?

JonM32

@BlakeTerhune @MikeVolz

That's actually how this all happen. I messed up the first service and did the delete in the wrong order - which caused this stuck, corrupt item. Then to fix it, I ended up making a brand-new service, but it's completely separate from the corrupt one.

ryanuthoff

Are you able to see the Portal item in the Portal REST endpoint? You can try and attempt to delete the item directly from the REST endpoint, although I'm not sure if it will let you with delete protection enabled.

Also, this could be something to look into: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-enterprise-portal-questions/remove-items-of-type-null/td-p/1115945

Edit: Also this could be useful: https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/problem-unable-to-delete-a-detached-item-in-portal-for--000024798

JonM32

It doesn't show up in the rest endpoint. However, it shows up on the portal website.

I will look into these options. If I have no luck, I'll likely connect with a support specialist for further assistance.

ryanuthoff

I'd look into the second link I posted if it doesn't show up in the rest endpoint. You can try taking the ItemID of your corrupted Portal item and see if it exists in your content directory on your Portal server machine. There should be a folder that is named with the ItemID of every item in Portal. But if it's not there, then you might be able to follow the instructions from the second link I posted and fix it that way.

DavidColey

Hello @JonM32 - Yes the second link that @RyanUthoff posted may work. I ran into a similar situation in 2023 when we were at 11.1 where a federated map service and a federated geocode service were deleted from our federated site, leaving behind the orphaned items in the Enterprise portal gwdb.

Esri reached out to me after I tried everything in this post, force delete, etc etc. Nothing worked.

However, I don't see the solution they suggest below as any more or less risky than copy-paste method from the second link in the .../items directory. This worked for me:

From esri:

****

We don't encourage poking around in the internals of Portal for ArcGIS. My suspicion here is that the records exist in the database and index, but not the content directory, causing the item corruption from Sharing/REST.

Using the initial administrator account (used to originally create the site), you can run the following commands using the PostgreSQL binaries:

cd C:\arcgisportal\pg_sqlX.Y\bin
psql -h localhost -U <username> -p 7654 -d gwdb -c "DELETE FROM gw_items WHERE id='<itemID>'"

Once complete, you'll need to run a search reindex as well at minimum which will take some downtime for the search capability.

****

Hope this helps.

GrahamWood-HWC

Great trick.

I used @DavidColey 's method but modified somewhat..

I exported the whole table to a CSV

and then found the cuplrit in notepad to get it's itemid and deleted in portal rest
https://YourGIS.com.xy/portal/sharing/rest/content/users/OWNERNAME/items/PlaceItemIDHere/delete

DavidColey

Ok @GrahamWood-HWC - I'm glad that you were able to delete your item from the portal's sharing content using the 'delete' method, and then that item deleted from from the portal gwdb. Hopefully that will work for most..

But the reason I posted up the gwdb method was because I could not delete my orphaned items from the sharing content. They simply were not found in at any sharing endpoint for portal or server, but still showed as an item in the portal. The only way to remove the orphaned items was by using the -c "DELETE FROM command against the gwdb.

GrahamWood-HWC

Yep i had the same behaviour. the item wasn't in portal rest sharing content but it was in the db I had the old itemid from the portal logs but couldn't find it via substituting into a bunch of urls I formed from other portal items on the rest sharing format..

once I queried this gw_items I found it with a different id.

anyways thanks for this it got me out of having redundant items in the db..

Doe mee aan het gesprek

Aangemelde leden kunnen berichten plaatsen, updates volgen en meer. Nieuw hier? Registreer een gratis account.

Snelle Links

Community Help
Find useful guides, FAQs, and documents to help you navigate and make the most of Esri Community.